The “top Notch” program which trained and certified 1,100 service members in 2011 officially opened its doors and settled in to the 1st Engineer Brigade and the Robotic Systems Project Office (RSJPO) Tuesday.

Director of the Robotics systems joint project office, Dewey Resch, says in 2007 he was asked if he’d like to develop the first-ever robot training program.

“It kind of sounded fun, its robots,” said Resch the then retired army combat engineer.

Resch says now all Army engineers, and some Marines deploying are trained on robots at Fort Wood’s 5,000 sq. foot building.

Resch says the robots range in size from two pounds to six tons, but are not designed to replace soldiers… just save their lives. “To this day we have had 780 robots blown up. So that is 780 lives that have been directly saved.”

Leaning how to use the robots are generally easy too. Resch says “The majority of the robots use Xbox or Playstation like controllers to operate.”

The establishment of the Robotic University at Fort Leonard Wood will assist in meeting increased demands for training and maintaining robotic systems.